


blood is running deep (some things never sleep)

by kathillards



Series: girls like girls [9]
Category: Kamen Rider Build
Genre: F/F, Werewolf AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-10 18:57:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15297882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kathillards/pseuds/kathillards
Summary: Sawa's heard all the myths about Pandora's Forest. The tales of wolves out for blood. The strange creatures called Smashes, a mad scientist’s lost experiments. The box buried deep within that could cause the end of the world as we know it.Just fairytales. Just stories. Until, suddenly, they aren't.





	blood is running deep (some things never sleep)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [snakelesbians](https://archiveofourown.org/users/snakelesbians/gifts).



> for zali (2014federalbudget on tumblr) who requested a misora/sawa werewolf au and then it got wildly out of control. serves me right for trying to write a build au, honestly.
> 
> nascita pack: sento, ryuga, misora, kazumi, the three crows (deceased)  
> rogues pack: gentoku, utsumi, evolt/soichi, hell bros

Everyone in Touto knows the stories about Pandora’s Forest. It’s a strange and cavernous beast, yawning open at the edge of the country with acres of green trees and spilling out into a spiraling forest so far that nobody has been able to spot the edges yet, not with the drones or the helicopters or anything.

Maybe there are no edges, that’s what Sawa thinks. Maybe it’s just miles and miles of ancient trees and animals that awaken in the night, miles of no moonlight through the foliage, just winds like whispers and winds like monsters.

She’s heard the myths, the legends. The tales of wolves out for blood. The strange creatures called Smashes, a mad scientist’s lost experiments. The box buried deep within the Forest that could cause the end of the world as we know it. Fairytales, maybe.

But even fairytales have inklings of truth.

Sawa looks her boss in the eye and says, “I’ll go find out the truth,” and she means it, she really does.

.

.

.

The Forest is cold and damp, that first night. Her bones feel rickety with the terror of walking alone in it, even with all her jackets, all her gear, all her knowledge from being a Nanba child. She almost stops and turns back in the very first hour, but she doesn’t.

Sawa Takigawa knows only a few things for certain: that her real father is dead, that her mother isn’t coming back, that Nanba Industries will ruin the world for greed if someone doesn’t stop them. That the Forest has been growing, steadily and steadily, like it’s about to overtake Touto, and the government won’t, or can’t, do anything about it. That she’s a journalist before she’s a soldier and she has to find out the truth, even if it kills her.

It may kill her.

But she keeps walking. Each step is treacherous, fumbling for footing in the mud and the slopes, over the cracked branches and the glittering bugs. She has her phone, her knife, and a will, and all she can do is hope that it will be enough. For months she’s been studying all the rumors of the wolves of Pandora’s Forest, from the outlandish (they ooze jelly from their paws) to the realistic (one of them has glowing green eyes and can control objects), in the hopes that they will lead her straight to them.

The stories are very clear on one thing: if Touto needs a savior, you will find one in the Forest. This, she’s read in poems and mutterings, passed down from those who dared venture into the forest and miraculously survived. The protector is in the Forest. The savior is in the Forest. It’s a paradox of Pandora: to stop the Forest from creeping into the country and swallowing everyone whole, she needs to find a champion from within.

It takes her five nights to find a wolf.

.

.

.

Some of the stories had said they were werewolves instead. That they had sharper teeth and faster reflexes and grew to the size of horses. That they lived in packs and roamed the Forest at night to keep all the other animals in line. That they ruled the Forest with fear, or respect, nobody was quite sure of the difference. That in the day time, they were human, and fragile, and kind.

Sawa hadn’t believed that bit, at first. Crazy enough that Pandora’s Forest sprouted overnight all those years ago; it was too much for it to have humans, too, to host lycanthropes instead of just mindless beasts.

But the wolf she sees doesn’t look mindless.

And its eyes glow green like emeralds, a beacon shining through the velvety darkness of the night.

“Hi,” Sawa says, stretching out a hand. Fear is for Touto, she tells herself over and over. Fear is not for the Forest. Fear is something she has cut out of her heart and abandoned in the city.

The wolf stares at her, that beautiful, dreadful gaze burning holes in her skin, and then it turns and lopes away.

For a moment, she’d thought it might leap for her, try to kill her, eat her, whatever it is that the wolves of the Forest do to wandering humans. Her other hand still curls tight around her knife in preparation. But maybe the stories were true about this, at least: the wolves understand.

Sawa follows after the wolf. It’s not running, so it must not care if she does. She’s careful to keep a decent distance, to follow behind the trees and bushes, to step carefully over every branch so she doesn’t scare the animal.

Her limbs are aching by the time the wolf stops. They’re deeper in the forest than she has ever gone alone, and all the trees look the same, but the wolf huffs out a quiet breath, curls up beneath a tree, and goes to sleep.

Sawa pulls out her phone. Even if she doesn’t survive this, there needs to be a record. Something that says _I was here, I saw them, they are real, they are coming_.

And later, as dawn breaks over the Forest—distant through all the foliage, only a glimmer of pink light as soft and uncertain as a hazy memory—the wolf begins to change.

She’s halfway to falling asleep herself, sitting underneath a nearby tree, when she hears the sound of it—a transformation of bones and limbs and muscles, and a girl’s voice from deep within saying, “ _Ouch_.” Sawa jolts up and stares at the miracle in front of her.

Where the green-eyed wolf had been sits a girl, maybe nineteen or twenty, with brown eyes and short dark hair, wearing a long pink nightgown and no shoes. Swathed in the greenery of the forest, she looks completely out of place. Like someone had transplanted her into the landscape artificially.

“Hello,” says the girl, blinking those big brown eyes at her. “Who are you?”

.

.

.

Her name is Misora, she learns, scribbling it down into one of her notepads so she doesn’t forget it, and the wolf that she had been in the night is named Vernage, of the glowing green eyes.

“Why is her name different?” Sawa asks, leaning closer.

Misora picks a leaf out of her hair and twirls it between her fingers. “Because I’m not her. She was something else, and now she’s a part of me. That’s how it works, you know. For all of us.”

“All of us?”

“So many questions.” Misora’s lips twist, annoyed. “Maybe it’s better if I just show you.”

Misora walks in the Forest like she belongs here, no matter how otherworldly her appearance is compared to the ageless trees and the black-winged birds. Her footsteps are sure as she crosses over puddles and kicks around branches, Sawa following far more timidly in her wake. She knows every twist and turn in the pathway, leads Sawa straight through what must be the heart of the forest and out towards a cave carved into the side of a mountain.

Sawa stops, looks back. Nothing but trees for miles.

They hadn’t even known there were mountains in the Forest. She doesn’t know how far they’ve walked.

“Are you coming or not?” Misora stands at the foot of the cave, looking terribly small and yet terribly important, dwarfed by the mountain behind her. A tree branch droops just over her head, a crown of gold-green leaves atop her hair.

Sawa swallows, and then steps forward. Inside the cave, there is unimaginable light—she has no idea where it comes from, when most of the Forest is darkened from the foliage, but it’s warm and blue and bathes her in the scent of home and hearth. The walls go out and then curl away, expanding into a huge room with what looks like old, used furniture—leather chairs, sofas, wooden tables, most with holes or stains or chips in them—scattered around in the semblance of a living room.

It looks like a place humans might live, if not for the shadows dancing around the edges, the way the hallway forks off just behind into deeper and darker parts of the cave. She shivers, not from the cold but from the unknown.

“So, you live here?” Sawa asks, reaching for her phone again. Misora doesn’t seem to care about the pictures, so she takes as many as she can. “With the others?”

Misora nods, walks past her, and collapses on a garishly pink sofa. “The boys are probably out prowling. We’ve been having some issues lately, with this rogue pack of wolves.”

“Rogue wolves?”

“Sorry, the pack is called the Rogues,” Misora clarifies. “They’re not actually, you know, rogues. That’s just what they call themselves.”

Sawa takes a seat gingerly on one of the armchairs that looks the least likely to collapse. The whole place smells of fire and meat, but it’s not entirely unpleasant. “What do you call your pack, then?”

Misora tilts her head, dark hair falling into her eyes. She sweeps it off in annoyance, then grabs a band from around her wrist and ties half of it up into a high ponytail. “We call ourselves the Nascita pack,” she says finally. “Just for fun.”

Sawa gets our her notepad—she could type it on her phone, but for important things, she needs them written down. She scrawls _Nascita_ in one corner, and then _Rogues_ in the other. “How many of you are there?”

“Four of us.” Misora picks at a threadbare cushion. Sawa watches her carefully, this strange wolf-girl who doesn’t seem quite so wolfish right now. But sometimes the light catches her face just right and she remembers the glowing green eyes of the beast she had been.

“One of us,” continues Misora, oblivious to Sawa’s inner turmoil, “actually came from a Hokuto pack.”

Sawa jerks, surprised. “Wait, there are Hokuto packs—the Forest is in Hokuto, too?”

Misora’s gaze holds a touch of scorn now, as she studies Sawa. “You didn’t know? I guess the people of Touto have always been blindingly self-centered. Pandora’s Forest is everywhere, across the whole country.”

“How would we know?” Sawa protests. “We can’t see the end of it. It just goes on and on.”

“That’s because it’s magic.” Misora rolls her eyes and looks, for a moment, like the teenage girl she surely had been just a few years ago. Sawa searches for a memory of feeling that same way but can’t find it, not in her haze of Nanba memories. It itches at her.

“I want to meet your friends,” she says, rather than dwelling on the aching emptiness. “Your packmates.”

“Stick around.” Misora waves a hand dispassionately. “I don’t care. We have human food somewhere.”

Sawa gets to her feet, notepad and phone clutched tightly in her hand, the metal of her knife still cool against her forearm, tucked away and out of sight. She doesn’t think it would be much use against a creature so strange as Misora, as Vernage, but it’s always good to be prepared.

She leaves Misora sitting there, playing with the golden bracelet on her wrist, as she goes in search of something, anything in this bizarre cave-home that might lead her to Pandora’s Box, and to the promised savior of Touto.

.

.

.

Well into the afternoon, Misora’s remaining packmates return home. Sawa has found only bedrooms, what looks like a laboratory, and a graveyard just beyond the cave with a stick that marks the death of three people—or wolves—through red, blue, and yellow flags. When she gets back to the cave, there are three other boys in there.

“Oi, Misora,” one of them is saying, loudly and without any notice of Sawa’s appearance at the threshold, “Check it out.”

He deposits a—still alive—rabbit into Misora’s arms, a fluffy grey thing with ears that stick straight out in either fear or alarm, and she gasps in delight.

“It was my idea,” says another boy, this one with brown hair down to his chin and what looks like hearts in his eyes as he stares at Misora. “I said we should name him Sento.”

“But we already have a Sento,” protests the first boy, jerking a thumb at the third of their crew. “Hey, Sento? What are you—oh.”

Sento is the only one of them who’s noticed her. He’s tall and lanky, with dark hair that falls right across his forehead, and a narrowed, calculating gaze. In one of his hands is a red bottle, his fingers curled around it protectively, and he holds it as he walks towards her, as if it’s going to do something to her.

Maybe it is. Sawa takes two steps back, away from the three boys.

“That’s Sawa,” Misora pipes up, finally lifting her attention from the bunny in her arms. “She wandered into the forest and saw me last night so I brought her here.”

“What?” Sento asks in disbelief. “You just brought a human into our home?”

“Relax.” Misora rolls her eyes at him. “Look at her. She’s not here to hunt us.”

“You don’t know that,” the first boy argues, crossing his arms over his purple jacket. “What if she’s with the Rogues?”

“Sorry,” Sawa interrupts, because the second boy is looking worrisomely close to murder. “But I’m from Touto, and I’m only here to find out about Pandora’s Box.”

This gives all of them pause, Sento’s eyebrows raising high enough to hit his hairline and Misora finally dividing her attention from her new pet rabbit.

“What do you know about Pandora’s Box?” asks the second boy.

“Nothing,” Sawa says. “That’s why I’m here.”

“We don’t know anything about it,” says Purple Jacket. “Can’t help you. Sorry.”

She stares at him. He looks somehow familiar—something about the lines of his face, the three braids in his hair, the way he holds himself, like she’s seen him somewhere before—maybe in a store, or on the streets, or on the TV…

“Oh, my god,” she says. “You’re Ryuga Banjou.”

All four of them exchange brief, panicked looks, and then Sento is shaking the bottle again and—

The next thing she knows is darkness.

.

.

.

Misora is sitting at her side when she wakes up. This would be fine, if she weren’t in wolf form. Sawa blinks once or twice to get the limber, white-furred frame of the wolf into focus, and then she jumps.

Her knife is gone. So, in fact, are her phone and notebook and her entire bag full of provisions and assorted weaponry. She probably should’ve expected that, so she improvises and takes off one of her boots in case she needs to throw it somewhere.

Misora—no, _Vernage_ —wakes up at the sounds, her eyes glowing green.

Sawa stares the wolf down. Her shoe probably won’t do much damage against a supernatural creature, but it’s the only line of defense she has, so she wields it like a bat aimed at Vernage.

“What did you guys do to me?” she demands, then immediately feels silly because it’s not like Misora can answer when she’s a wolf.

Vernage looks—if a wolf can display human emotions—almost amused, and she lets out a bark, gets up on her feet, and pads across the room to Sawa. They’re still inside the cave, she thinks, one of the darker, more dungeon-like rooms, lit with only a sliver of moonlight through a carved out window. There’s nothing else there except the two of them.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” says Sawa, although her voice is shaking. “But I will. I can.”

 _You have no idea who I am_ , she doesn’t say, the thought burning in her mind. _You have no idea where I come from. What they’ve made of me._

Vernage eyes glow that eerie emerald color, and then she seems to sigh. She jerks her head towards the makeshift window, turns around, and leaps. Her form barrels through the wall, exploding outwards in a burst of white fur, and opening up a new doorway for Sawa to follow through.

It’s a bad idea. Being alone with a werewolf in the night—and she doesn’t think, based on her evidence, that Vernage will be turning back to Misora before the dawn breaks—it’s almost more dangerous than walking in the Forest alone. And she has no idea where the boys are, what they might do to her.

Still, her feet follow Vernage of their own account, stepping cautiously through the hole in the wall and out into the chilly night, Pandora’s Forest rising all around her in damp, green darkness. Her bare foot squelches over the mud on the ground, and she belatedly remembers to put on her boot before finding and following Vernage deeper inside.

Vernage leads her through a winding path between the trees, so far in that Sawa starts to think she’s being intentionally misled so she’ll get lost far away from the cave, but then Vernage stops, up against a clearing of old oak trees, and Sawa stops too, peering over the back of the wolf’s head.

The clearing spirals out into a riverbank, water flowing from—somewhere, maybe a waterfall off the cliffs just nearby—in deep, brilliant greens and blues down the path. There are flowers, mostly lilies, and the glimmer of fish inside the river, and beyond that, there are three wolves stalking the edge of the river just a dozen feet away from her.

Vernage looks over her shoulder, eyes flashing as if to say ‘ _Watch. Don’t do anything stupid._ ’ Sawa nods before she can fathom what she’s doing, and then Vernage bounds away to join the other three wolves.

All together, they are majestic. One of them is a deep russet red streaked with blue-black fur, each eye a different color. Another is a shade of violet she’s pretty sure doesn’t occur in natural wolves, his eyes a warm, glowing amber she can see from far away. And the third is golden-brown, perhaps the most normal color of all of them, smaller than the other males but clearly strong.

Sawa’s fingers itch for her camera, or even her notebook, anything to document this amazing, bewildering sights. The boys, if they notice her, don’t bother coming over; perhaps Vernage had said something to them. They continue their hunt, the purple one diving into the river occasionally to catch fish, the other two watching the mountains in wait, and Vernage—

Vernage watching her, eyes like emeralds in the salty-sweet night. Sawa leans against a tree, feeling her body give out from the stress and the danger of the past two days, and she sits down on the ground and all she can do is watch.

Once, her supervisor at the paper had told her that while memory was a powerful thing, it was fallible, and no substitution for a photograph or a recording.

But out here, with nothing but her own eyes to capture the majesty of the four wolves, the Nascita pack, the monsters that lurked inside Pandora’s Forest, Sawa thinks that there is nothing less fallible than her memory. There’s no way she can ever forget this, not even if she tries.

.

.

.

She’s still awake when morning light breaks over the Forest, and the wolves begin to change back to human. Misora comes for her, leaving the boys to stand around and talk and eye her suspiciously, or whatever it is they want to do.

“The Rogues didn’t show up today,” says Misora conversationally. “Do you need water?”

She does, but she doesn’t say it. She has about a million questions, but the only that pops out of her mouth is: “How do you keep your clothes on?”

Misora’s lips quirk in a smile. “Oh, well, originally it was a bit difficult. Ryuga—he was the purple one—had quite a few incidents so Sento got fed up and…” Here she lifts something out of he pocket, a pink bottle that she shakes and something rattles around inside it. “We call them Pandora’s Bottles. They’re pretty useful for a lot of things.”

“May I?” Sawa asks carefully. Misora seems to trust her, although she can’t tell why. The bottle is light in her palm, the pink glittering under the light of the dawn, and it feels like something magical even though it’s just a bottle.

“So, how’d you know Ryuga?”

Sawa pauses as she passes the bottle back to Misora, knowing she has to choose her words carefully, in case she was about to get knocked out again. “Saw him on TV. It was a while back, but apparently he’d escaped from prison.”

“Mm.” Misora turns and crosses her arms, watching the boys—Sento is watching Ryuga and the other one spar now. “That makes sense. That was when we found him.”

“The three of you?”

“Me and Sento,” she clarifies. “Mostly Sento. And Kazumi joined… a while later. He lost his pack, the one from Hokuto, so now he’s with us.”

Sawa opens her mouth, then closes it again, not wanting to ask the immediate obvious questions. This whole conversation seems like a test, Misora giving her information to see which one she bites at.

“This whole werewolf thing,” she asks instead. “How does it happen? Were you bitten?”

“Not bitten,” Misora says, and her hand goes to her golden bracelet again. “It’s called Nebula Gas. You get hit with it, you turn into a Smash. If you get hit with too much of it, you turn into a wolf. We… haven’t figured out yet where it comes from, and who’s spreading it.”

“Do you have any theories?”

Misora glances sidelong at her and smiles again, this time more secretive. “A few. But it really depends on what the Pandora’s Box is all about.”

Sawa frowns in thought. “Does anyone know what Pandora’s Box is about?”

“We think the Rogues might.” Misora shrugs. “Not that they’re gonna tell us. There’s five of them, and they’re a lot bigger than us. And they’ve killed… a lot of people we care about, so.”

Her questions fade away from the tip of her tongue as she looks at Misora, standing there with an air of loneliness about her that not even the rest of her pack can cure. She seems faraway, a girl lost in a forest instead of a wolf who has mastered its mysteries. Her lips and cheeks are pink, flushed from the chill, so extraordinarily human.

“I’m sorry,” says Sawa quietly. “I know what it’s like to lose someone you care about.”

Misora glances over at her, brown eyes sharp and incisive. There’s a weight behind her gaze, a judgment that rakes over Sawa, like she’s trying to see if Sawa is someone worthy of more trust, of her secrets, of whatever dark and terrible dangers are lurking in her shadows.

Sawa doesn’t know if she _is_ worthy, not with the secrets she’s keeping, or the past she’s buried behind her in Touto. But whatever Misora sees in her, it makes her smile.

“I like you,” Misora declares. “But,” and here her voice gets low and cold, “if you do anything to hurt us, I’ll have to kill you.”

Sawa’s lips twitch. “I understand,” she says, and crosses her fingers in her mind that she won’t have to. That she may have found the right people, somehow, in the depths of the Forest. The right people to free her so she’ll never have to betray anyone again.

.

.

.

The boys give her back her bag, packed extra full with fruits and fish, with a murmured apology from Sento for freaking out about her.

“We just had to make sure,” he tells her. “Just don’t take pictures of our faces, okay?”

“Don’t worry,” she says. “There’s no signal here anyways.”

Misora takes her out after breakfast to make sure she knows the paths leading back to the cave, so she won’t get lost in the labyrinth of trees. It’s much nicer here in the day, warm and dewy, although the sunlight still gets caught in all the tree leaves, and she has to carry at least two flashlights on her at all times, just in case.

“Do all the boys have wolf names, too?” Sawa asks her in the afternoon, sitting at the riverbank with her feet soaking in the water. It’s refreshing as the waves rock against her legs, cool and pleasant against the heat of the Forest in the daytime.

Misora reaches into the water and grabs a fish with her bare hands, eyeing it critically as it flops around in her grasp. “Mmhm. Sento is Build, because he helps me build the bottles—I guess, it’s kind of a stupid name. And Kazumi is Grease, which is also stupid, but he got it from his Hokuto pack so that’s okay. And Ryuga is Cross-Z which is _the_ stupidest name but he thinks it makes him sound cool.”

Sawa stifles a laugh. “Did they name themselves, then?”

“They’re a little different from me,” Misora says, throwing the fish back just as it was about to die from the oxygen. It splashes back into the water and disappears into the current. “Vernage—it’s like she possessed me. We think it’s because I must have been too close to Pandora’s Box, when I was doused with the gas. Or maybe Dad—I don’t know. I can’t explain it.”

Sawa turns towards her, angling her body sideways, still kicking her feet around in the water. “So you’ve seen Pandora’s Box, then? Did your father—”

“My father,” Misora interrupts, “is a bad person. Whatever he did to me, we still don’t know, but it left me like… like this.” She looks down at her hands, still wet from the fish and the water, and her brow furrows. “Half-human, half-something else. Too much power that I don’t know how to control.”

She looks up and half-smiles at whatever the look on Sawa’s face is. “He’s with the Rogues now. Don’t worry, if we run across him, I won’t introduce you.”

“Thanks,” says Sawa dryly, which makes Misora laugh. It’s a sweet, warm sound, so at odds with the rest of her, this closed-off girl who becomes a wolf unwillingly. “Listen, Misora… I’m an investigative reporter. Whatever’s going on with this Pandora’s Box—I’ve heard the stories. I think I can help.”

“What stories?” asks Misora with a frown. “All we know is that the Forest comes from it, and that it has the power to change—or destroy—the world.”

“I’ve heard that, too,” Sawa says. “But also that it’s missing a key, and that’s why it hasn’t destroyed us all yet. A key that could change everything. Some people say it’s multiple keys, some people say it’s a person. And some of the stories, they say that Pandora’s Box will awaken when the savior does.”

“We know about the savior,” Misora agrees. “All the animals—the trees themselves seem to know it. And the Rogues are always after us about it. We think— _I_ think it’s Ryuga.”

Sawa’s eyebrows rise. “Why Ryuga?”

“Just something…” Misora waves a hand. “I don’t know. Just something about him, it’s kind of like me. Like something else is inside him, sometimes. Possessing him. Using him. Something magical. Pandora’s Forest, it’s all magic, you know.”

“Yeah,” says Sawa, looking down at the fish fluttering around her legs in the water, then back up at Misora as a rare smile blooms across her face. “I can see that.”

.

.

.

Three nights later, a Smash attacks them near the river. It’s a large, lumbering beast, not quite an animal and not quite a human, made up of different parts like Frankenstein’s monster, that vaguely look like some sort of bird. Its eyes are glowing red and it destroys five trees in its path.

Sawa screams, and all at once, the wolves of the Nascita pack are there.

Vernage gets in front of her, growling at the Smash. The boys rush forward to attack, Sento—Build flying over her and slamming the Smash to the ground. Cross-Z and Grease flank him, and the Smash roars, rising to its feet and swiping at Grease. He dodges, then Cross-Z jumps and digs his teeth into the monster’s arms.

“Well, well,” says a voice, low and terrifyingly familiar from behind her, as she’s standing there paralyzed. “What a surprise to see you here, Sawa.”

She turns and the man standing behind her smiles, pleasantly but without any humor, a trace of madness lurking in his eyes.

“Utsumi,” she gasps, and draws her knife. “What are you doing here?”

“Come, now, there’s no need for that,” Utsumi says with a frown, adjusting his glasses on his nose. Vernage has noticed him by now and turned to bare her teeth at him. “We are comrades, aren’t we, Sawa? Siblings, of a sort?”

“I’m not your—” Sawa begins, but Utsumi raises a hand and flicks his wrist. Out of nowhere, two other wolves fly out from the trees, huge black and white beasts snarling for blood, both with unsettlingly blue eyes, and Vernage leaps to meet them in mid-air.

“Amazing, aren’t they?” says Utsumi, worrying admiration gleaming on his face. “Are you here to join us, Sawa? The best of Nanba’s army?”

“ _Join_ you?” she gasps in disbelief. Behind her, the roars of the fight are getting louder, more painful to hear. She can hear Kazumi howling in pain as the Smash strikes at him. “What do you mean _join_ you?”

Utsumi leans closer to her, his smile now unkind and dangerous. “To be a wolf, Sawa. To be one of Nanba’s great champions. Isn’t that what we all want?”

And before she can protest, he stabs a bottle straight into her neck and the last thing she sees is Vernage’s green eyes glowing, a terrible howl ripping across the night.

.

.

.

“You’re insane,” she spits at Utsumi. Her hands are cuffed behind her back but he hasn’t bothered to restrain her in any other way. They’re inside what she thinks is a hideaway, perhaps the remnants of a gothic castle, judging from the crumbling ruins and flickering candle lighting.

“Me?” Utsumi adjusts his glasses again and stares at her in mock-surprise. “I’m only doing my duty as a Nanba child. A duty you should understand. A duty you should accept.”

Sawa bares her teeth at him. “Nanba ruined my life. They killed my father.”

“What a pity,” he drawls, bored. “Everyone has terrible things in their past, Sawa. We are stronger than that. We don’t let the past drag us down. We march onwards into the future, to be the great, secret army of Nanba Industries, to bring glory onto his name—”

“By _what_?” Sawa demands. “By destroying Touto? By letting the Forest overtake the world?”

“You are a fool,” Utsumi sighs. “The Forest will unite our country so that Nanba can lead it. Touto, Hokuto, Seito, they never should have become separate. Once we have Pandora’s Box, nothing will stand between Nanba and victory.”

“So you don’t have Pandora’s Box yet?”

Utsumi narrows his eyes. “We will soon enough, once those pathetic wolves you were cavorting with hand it over in exchange for your freedom.”

Panic lances through her chest. _Did they have the Box all along?_ “They won’t do that. They barely know me.”

“I think you underestimate how pathetically compassionate that pack is,” Utsumi says, his lip curling in disgust. “The Hell Brothers will let them know of the deal, and they will come here to make it to save your life. It’s what they do. And meanwhile, you just need to sit pretty and not make any more of a traitorous nuisance of yourself.”

Sawa is tempted to spit at him again, but she reigns herself in. _Keep him talking, keep him talking_. “Oh, and then what? You have the Box and it magically fixes all your problems? It’s supposed to destroy the world, not unite it.”

Utsumi smiles nastily at her. “A destroyed world is so much easier to unite. Honestly, it’s like you didn’t pay attention in class at all.”

“I notice you’re not a wolf,” she says pointedly. “Nanba doesn’t trust you to do the dirty work? Still thinks you’re too weak?”

His face clouds over in anger. “Nanba trusts me with _everything_ ,” he hisses. “I am his top lieutenant, and soon, I will take the gas and become a wolf—”

“But you haven’t yet,” Sawa taunts. “You’re not even close, are you? The rest of the pack, how long have they been wolves? How long has he been promising you that you’re next?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Utsumi snaps, his whole face taut and narrow with barely repressed fury. “You’re nothing but a traitor. You’re _nothing_ without Nanba.”

Behind her, she hears the click of her pin undoing the handcuffs, and smiles sweetly at him. Too late, Utsumi realizes what she’d been doing.

“And you’re nothing _with_ him,” Sawa says scornfully, and slams her knee upwards so hard he crashes to the floor.

She hears the wolves before she sees them, and has no time to wonder if they’re the Rogues or the Nascita pack come to rescue her. She snatches the knife Utsumi had jacked from her out of his pocket and turns towards the nearest door and runs.

Outside, she can see the first glimmers of morning start to envelop the forest, a low and warm filtering of light, barely silver in the dawn. She stops when she gets to the edges, the broken gates of the Rogues’ lair her only obstacle. If it’s morning already, that means the wolves must be back to—

“Sawa!” calls Sento, and the four of them are emerging from within the trees, bruised and bloodied, but all of them so wonderfully, mercifully alive.

“You’re okay,” Ryuga says in half disbelief, half amazement. “How did you get out?”

“Kneed him in the balls,” Sawa admits, taking Kazumi’s hand over the gate so he can lift her across the threshold. “He’s an idiot. Never had the chance to do anything but chain me up.”

“That’s incredible,” says Kazumi, admiring. There’s a gash of blood down his cheek, and the sleeves of his shirt are ripped, but otherwise, he looks mostly healthy—they all do. “You missed quite a fight, though.”

Misora steps out from behind Sento, her face drawn and quiet, eyes glittering even though they’re brown instead of green. “You knew him,” she says softly, halfway to an accusation. “How did you know him?”

Sawa takes a deep breath, finally feeling the guilt unfurl inside her chest. “I—”

But before she can explain herself, they all hear Utsumi’s voice thundering from inside the structure: “ _DON’T LET THEM GET AWAY_.”

Ryuga scoffs. “They’re not wolves anymore. What are they gonna do?”

“Let’s beat it, anyway,” Sento suggests, shaking a bottle vigorously. “Ready?”

In a flash of smoke and light, Sawa is whisked away, the four of them all blurs around her as they return back to their cave, to the safety and comfort of their home.

.

.

.

Misora is still staring at her an hour later, after everyone has gotten bandaged up and eaten enough food that they won’t die of exhaustion. The boys are scattered around the main living room, Ryuga and Kazumi arguing over something while Sento attempts to do his equations despite them, but Misora hasn’t spoken at all.

“How did you know him?” she asks again, and the room goes quiet.

Sawa sighs, staring down at her hands in her lap. “He and I… we were both orphans. Nanba Orphanage took us in. They… train us, all of us, from the time we’re little kids, to do nothing but serve Nanba Industries. We’re called the Nanba Children, his secret and most devoted soldiers.”

“Brainwashing,” Sento says slowly. “They took you in as a child?”

Sawa nods and wipes away furious tears from her cheek. “They killed my father and stole me. I only found out—well, I became a reporter, and that’s how I found out. And I had to break away, I had to do _something_. They were going to ruin Touto, the whole world. So I came here to try and see if there was a chance I could help stop them.”

“That’s pretty brave,” Kazumi says, rocking back on his heels. “They took over my home, too. Our prime minister, she’s the one who made me and my pack take the Nebula Gas, but she was just being manipulated by Nanba. And—” He glances at Sento and Misora. “And Evolt.”

“I know Evolt,” Sawa admits quietly. “He leaves the Forest, doesn’t he? He’s the only one who can. I see him talking to Nanba, to the other leaders…”

“He’s my father,” Misora says abruptly. “He’s the one who did this to us. To all of us.”

“Hey,” Ryuga pipes up, frowning at Misora. “Whatever happened to us, whatever they did to all of us—we’re here now, aren’t we? And we’re fighting for the right reasons. That’s what matters.”

“Do you really have Pandora’s Box?” Sawa asks.

“We didn’t want to tell you,” Sento admits. “But we should have. It put you in danger, because they were after us for it.”

She shakes her head. “I understand. You can’t trust every stranger who wanders into the Forest.”

This gets a laugh out of the boys, but Misora only narrows her gaze, then gets to her feet and walks out of the cave. The four of them stare after her, nobody making a move to follow her in the silent confusion.

“I should go,” Ryuga breaks finally, getting up off the old couch. “She’ll listen to me.”

“No,” Sawa interrupts, standing. “It should be me. I owe her an apology.”

Sento nods and Ryuga sits down again, the three boys watching her go with a quiet sort of acceptance. Sawa pads her way through the cave carefully, and outside, takes the path that leads to the river, her best guess for finding Misora.

True to form, Misora is at the river, her pink dress getting wet at the edges as she sits with her legs in the cold water up to her knees. The wind is picking up, rumpling Misora’s dark hair, and Sawa’s own, but she doesn’t stop to go back for a jacket, instead sitting down next to Misora and letting the silence swirl around them for what seems like hours.

“I’m sorry,” Sawa says at last. “I should have told you the truth. I put you in danger and I didn’t mean to.”

“Yeah,” Misora says with a snort. “That’s the issue here.”

Sawa blinks at her. “Then what?”

Misora exhales sharply. “I knew you were lying to us. Or not telling us the whole truth. I knew it from the beginning, but I let you in anyways, because I thought—I thought—” She breaks off in frustration. “I don’t know.”

Sawa searches for something meaningful to say, something important, something that will express the true depth of her feelings, but before she can find it, Misora saves her the trouble by leaning across the gap between them and taking Sawa’s face in her hands and dragging her into a kiss.

Everything about the kiss is warm and weighty, like the world is settling in around her, the forest expanding and closing in all at once. It feels like the river rushing against their feet and the delight of watching the wolves hunt at the same time. Misora kisses her like she’s saving her from drowning, or teaching her to fly. It’s sweet and wild and leaves Sawa feeling like the sun is finally shining again.

“Don’t lie to us again,” Misora whispers when they part, Sawa’s hands coming up to curl around her arms and hold her in place. “I want you to stay with us.”

Sawa feels herself smile so hard it’s like her cheeks are splitting. “I want to stay with you too.”

“Okay.” Misora giggles suddenly, and then leans in to kiss her again. “Then stay with us. I’ll teach you to fight.”

“I’ll teach you to fish properly,” says Sawa, laughing, and Misora smiles so wide and bright, it’s like looking directly into the sun.


End file.
